"A friend of ours had been badgering us for a while to meet each other and I wasn’t super interested," the beloved Aussie chef tells 9Honey. "I don’t know, it just felt a bit awkward."

Then his friend showed him a photo of Price, singer and TV star famous for roles in Lipstick Jungle and Beverly Hills 90210, among other hits.

"I was like 'I’ll go on that blind date,'" he says.

Curtis Stone wasn't interested in going on a blind date – then his mate showed him a photo of Lindsay Price. (9Honey)

He got there 15 minutes early, so by the time Price arrived 45 minutes late, he was several glasses of rosé in – and Stone's chef mate (who'd promised to 'casually' send out freebies and make a fuss) had clocked off. It doesn't seem like he minded much.

"She’s been late ever since," he says affectionately. "And I wouldn’t even change that.

Two years later, they had a son, Hudson ("kind of by accident"). Stone proposed to Price a year after that, after a nerve-wracking few days hauling a big diamond ring around Naples "waiting for the right moment" and trying not to get mugged.

"In the end I was like, 'That’s it, I’m just doing it right now,'" he recalls. "We’d put Hudson down and were sitting on the balcony having a glass of wine and I asked her to marry me there and then."

A year after the wedding, they had another son, Emerson, and now the family lives in LA (also home to Stone's popular restaurant, Maude).

"You don’t realise how selfish your life is until you have children – because they depend on you, and before that no one does," Stone says. He admits he and Price both struggled in their first year as parents, and if he could do it again, he'd try to slow down more and step back from work and other projects.

'I think I knew pretty early that she was the one,' the celebrity chef says of his wife. (9Honey)

"[It] was brutal, that sleep deprivation, I don’t know if we talk about it enough," he says.

"It comes with this guilt, thinking, 'Well I shouldn’t say all the negative things; I’ve been given this beautiful thing and I should just be grateful for it,' but it’s bloody hard."

LISTEN: Shelly Horton gets real about her decision not to have kids, on this week's episode of the Honey Mums podcast. (Post continues below.)

"Still," he adds, "you get through that first year of torture, of no sleep, and you fall more in love because of it.

"It’s a different love for sure – it’s not like, 'Let’s go for coffee.' It’s like, 'Change that diaper then let’s go for coffee.'"

Happily enough (being married to a chef etc.) Price loves food (especially seafood, and homemade pasta), and is always the first guinea pig for new dishes at Maude.

"If I create something I’ll give it to her and see what she thinks first," Stone says.

'It’s a different love for sure – it’s not like, 'Let’s go for coffee.' It’s like, 'Change that diaper then let’s go for coffee.'' (9Honey)

He looks to his wife for guidance in general.

"Emotionally, she’s so much more sophisticated than I am. She can listen, she’s the best listener I’ve ever met, and she understands and takes that on – not just with me but with everybody she comes into contact with. It's part of what makes her great in her profession."